


Solace

by theroguesgambit



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Betrayal, Derek Has Issues, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Stalia, comfort kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 13:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2111724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroguesgambit/pseuds/theroguesgambit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She chose <em>Peter</em>."<br/>After Malia decides to side with Peter against the pack, Stiles comes to Derek for comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solace

**Author's Note:**

> My last two celebration updates of the day didn't end up being all that Sterek-themed, so I decided to write up a third for you all featuring our boys together. :)

“She chose _Peter._ ”

Derek stalls his own angry response, the one that burns up his throat and works to scream out of him. Peter had betrayed them _again_ , thrown Derek and the pack to the… _hunters…_ for power. And Derek shouldn’t be surprised, he _isn’t_ surprised, except by the small aching bitterness where a fresh spark of hope had flared up and died.

But this moment isn’t about him. He’s dealt with betrayal before. He’s dealt with betrayal _from Peter_.

But this is Stiles’ first, and Derek needs to handle it objectively.

“It must have been a hard choice for her. Family is a powerful promise, especially to someone who has none.”

Stiles scoffs, eyes walling off, and Derek can see him immediately dismissing the words. Which isn’t really fair, considering how hard it had been to say them.

“ _You_ didn’t choose Peter. You didn’t decide to side with him and attack us.”

The “this time” Derek is halfway expecting doesn’t even feel implied. All of Stiles’ rage, all that he can muster, is being directed at Malia.

Derek draws in a slow breath, shakes his head.

_Objective. Be objective._

“She might have thought it would go better if she was involved. That fewer people would be—”

The flat of Stiles’ hand hits the door.

“Don’t do that. Why are you _doing_ that?”

Derek presses his lips together, replies carefully: “What do you want me to do?”

The palm slams again before Stiles sags back against the still-rattling frame.

“I want you to let me hate her. Let me hate her, Derek.”

He _needs_ to be angry right now. Needs to hate. Anger doesn’t eliminate the heartbreak, but it can ease it a little, until it’s more bearable. Derek had lived long enough buried in his own rage to understand that.

“…Ok.”

For a long moment Stiles just stares at him, features taut with tension that keeps trying to slip into something raw and ragged.

“Don’t you hate her? She’s your cousin.”

What could Derek say? That he didn’t care about her the way Stiles had? They hadn’t formed the same level of bond? That he understands the draw of siding with Peter, with family?

“I hate that she hurt you.” And then, before he can quite help himself, before he can remember that this isn’t his moment, none of this is about him, he finds himself adding: “I get what that’s like.”

But somehow that, the unplanned admission, is what eases Stiles’ expression out of blind rage and into something softer.

“I know you do.”

Maybe that’s what Stiles needs right now: commiseration. Understanding. Maybe that’s why he came here in the first place.

Stiles is pushing himself off the wall, and something in his eyes has Derek talking again, awkward and stilted and achingly sincere.

“There’s nothing wrong with hurting.” He stumbles his way through the minefield of words, drawing from his own experience and wishing not for the first time that he had more skill at expressing himself. If he’d just taken that goddamn public speaking class in tenth grade, maybe Scott would have gone along with him last year. Maybe his betas would have stayed. Maybe he would have the first idea how to help Stiles now. It’s a ridiculous thought. It helps him push forward. “And there’s… there’s nothing wrong with still caring about her, either. For missing what you had.”

It had taken him a long time to accept that about Kate. That sometimes he would wake up late at night still craving her touch or missing the sound of her laugh. It had taken him _years,_ until it had happened again with Jennifer, for Derek to recognize that it wasn’t some kind of sickness inside of him that made him crave something he should be loathing. He didn’t miss the women who betrayed him. He missed what he thought they’d been.

And Stiles is going to miss what he’d thought he and Malia had been to each other like hell.

Malia isn’t a _bad_ person, not the way Derek’s failed loves had been. She’s just a girl who’d chosen her father above all things, and betrayed Stiles to do it.

Would that make it better for him? Worse? Does the context matter at all, or does all betrayal sting the same?

A hand touches his shoulder, and Derek realizes that he’d lost track of the world, somehow, long enough for Stiles to cross the room and stand right in front of him. When Derek meets his eyes, Stiles casts him a crooked smile.

“Hey, you still with me?”

“Always.”

He hadn’t meant for it to come out, knows Stiles hadn’t been suggesting anything even close to that. The unplanned confession twists in his gut but, just like his last, it seems to be what Stiles needs to hear.

He opens his mouth a few times, closing wordlessly, and the next thing Derek knows he’s being pulled into a fierce hug.

“I fucking hate her, Derek.”

And Derek forces his arms to move, forces himself not to stand too stiff as he slowly presses the palms of his overly tense hands against Stiles’ back.

“I know. That’s ok.”

“ _We_ were supposed to be her family. We were supposed to be enough.”

There’s nothing to say to that, not really. Stiles is still gripping him like he’s an anchor, like he’s lost at sea, afraid of drifting away if he loses his grip. Derek forces his hands to relax, forces himself not to think about the fact that the last hug he’d received had been from Cora when she was leaving him. To think instead about the sweetness in the way Laura had always held him, the times he had let himself hug her back and how _easy_ it had been when he’d stopped feeling like he hadn’t deserved it and just let himself surrender to the sensation.

He feels himself slowly relaxing into the contact now. Stiles lets out a shuddering breath and some of his own desperation eases out, like he can relax too now that it feels like Derek isn’t seconds away from bolting.

“Thanks.” The word ghosts across Derek’s ear, and he feels his shoulders twitch, flicking it away with a quick mental swat. He doesn’t know what to _do_ with someone’s thanks. Stiles’ hand clenches against his back, slow and reassuring. “No, don’t… you’re always here, Derek. You’re always here and _trying_ and I… obviously it’s an option for people to just ditch you when you need them, so that matters. It matters that you keep trying.”

The moment’s shifting, somehow, Stiles’ voice raw with something other than rage, something that leaves Derek uneasy and aching, wanting to sink into the sound and shy away at the same time.

Stiles’ body rolls a little, too on edge to stay still, long fingers sliding up Derek’s back to catch at his nape, clutch his hair. The comforting embrace is transforming into something different, something more, and Derek can feel it starting even before Stiles’ head tilts, his nose nuzzling into Derek’s throat. Before he lets out a desperate, gasping almost-sound and drags his cheek along Derek’s beard, moving with purpose. Derek feels it, but he can’t move away.

“Stiles…”

“Shut up.” It comes out thin, needy, his head tilting just enough so that it’s Stiles’ lips skimming across Derek’s cheek now, breathing hot as they part to whisper against the soft, dark beard. “Just… let me have something, for a minute. Something real. We’re real, aren’t we?”

Derek resists the urge to lick lips that feel suddenly too dry, stays determinedly still as Stiles’ mouth drags its first, earnest kiss against the corner of his own. His hands have dropped from their place on Stiles’ back, hovering and clenching at the air, not pushing him away ( _not_ pulling him in) because he knows where Stiles must be right now, knows what it feels like to _need_.

“This isn’t, you aren’t…”

“Tell me you don’t want it.”

Ragged breaths are gusting over Derek’s mouth, their lips just barely brushing.

Stiles is brokenhearted. He’d trusted, he’d loved, and that love betrayed him.

“It’s not the time.”

“Fuck you, Derek. Let me decide what I’m ready for.”

And then Stiles’ mouth is against his and Derek forgets his arguments, forgets words and logic and the reasons why his hands weren’t all over Stiles, tugging him closer, pulling him as close as possible.

He makes a broken sound, falling into the kiss hard and dizzyingly fast. He hasn’t kissed anyone since Jennifer (because he _can’t_ think about that moment with Kate, that doesn’t even count) and, god, he wants nothing more than to burn all those memories right out of his mind. Replace them with something better.

Something _real_.

Stiles’ hands are kneading down his sides, massaging into his hips before hooking into his belt loops and tugging himself forward. Derek has an arm around Stiles’ waist a second later, not willing to give an inch as they kiss, open and wet and a little too hard, a little too desperate to imprint this moment and scorch away what came before.

It takes too long for Derek to remember this is wrong, and once he does it takes even longer to convince himself to pull back.

Stiles is _heartbroken_. Stiles isn’t thinking clearly. It’s on Derek to make sure he doesn’t do something he’ll regret.

But Stiles’ fingers are tugging free from their place in his jeans, sliding up his sides and dragging his shirt up with it. He feels the heat of Stiles’ palms, his fingers ( _God_ , Stiles’ hands…) The needy little sounds Stiles makes as his thumbs smooth up Derek’s abs…

He could have this. Maybe both of them deserve this.

It physically hurts to drag his lips away. Stiles’ hand is back at his nape in a second, trying to pull him forward again. Derek turns away and Stiles lets out a heavy breath.

“ _Don’t._ ”

“Stiles, this isn’t… right now you’re feeling…”

Stiles’ head drops to his shoulder. He groans faintly.

“Figures I’m standing here with the one guy who’d rather be noble than get laid.”

Derek stiffens.

“I’m not trying to be—”

“I know,” Stiles cuts in, leaning to press a lingering kiss into his neck. “You just are. That’s why I want this with you.”

He’s kissing up Derek’s cheek, dragging teeth against the sharp edge of his jaw. Derek feels his arm flexing, tugging Stiles against him again despite himself, eyes squeezing shut.

“Stiles… this, right now, this is when you do things you regret.”

Strangers’ hands on his naked skin. Needles sinking into his flesh. The heat from the lighter scalding his arm, burning bubbling scars that will fade far too fast. Derek knows about loss, about making stupid decisions afterward. About doing anything to make the pain to stop and hurting all the worse in the aftermath.

Stiles has stopped kissing him, drawing back slowly. Derek can feel the heavy weight of his eyes. He forces his voice to come out steady.

“I don’t want to be one of those things.”

He _can’t_. He’s used to playing the role of the monster, but not like this. The way his own monsters hang in his memories... he can't become that for Stiles.

And if what they have fractures, he'll break.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this ending seems a little abrupt. This is actually a fragment of a longer piece, but the rest kind of span away from the plot (Stiles getting comforted over Malia), and became about Derek’s issues and bad history. So I decided to post this on its own, at least for now. The rest might come up later, or might even make its way into another fic.
> 
> Anyway, feedback is life, lovelies. Let me know what you think. <3
> 
> [Come find me on Tumblr](http://halekingsourwolf.tumblr.com)


End file.
